Faculty were asked to respond individually to the prompt: "Identify the three most critical characteristics/components of a research notebook/log/journal either in general or as pertaining to your specific discipline." Responses for the eleven faculty attending the workshop are tabulated below. You will notice the presence of several common themes. The four most commonly occurring characteristics seem to be:
- Sufficient level of detail
- Legibility and organization
- Understandable so that work can be repeated.
- Considerations of work undone or plans for future experiments.
If you have comments or questions related to research notebooks, please e-mail them to Dr. Lamp.
Individual Faculty Responses
(in no particular order)
Response Discipline detail: Accurate description of what you did, mistakes, how you fixed them, what you don't want to repeat. what was left undone organization/legibility detail Chemistry legibile Chemistry kept up Chemistry someone else (or I) could go back, follow, understand and repeat. Chemistry date and up to date Biology complete, replicable methods Biology well-labelled data Biology complete, organized and detailed methods section Chemistry presence of accurate and complete (mathematical or chemical) relevant equations Chemistry clear labelling or descriptions of samples, reagents, apparati, results Chemistry complete regarding details and observations Agriculture legible/readable Agriculture up to date Agriculture neat/logically organized Physics contains details and drawings of all work done, including exploratory work Physics understandable by others Physics what you did (how/when) Mathematics what you still need to do Mathematics questions/answers/resources Mathematics organized logically - good table of contents Chemistry enough detail to reproduce experiments Chemistry descriptions of failures and what was done to fix them Chemistry what you did that day and the date; explanation, details, document your programs Mathematics what you left untried Mathematics misc. thoughts; what you might consider Mathematics viability/fidelity Biology detail Biology legibility Biology time/date/location details Biology description of area/habitat Biology summary of field activities/effort and results Biology